dreams of pirate ships and patty hearst

Lessons learned from DMing two Adventurer's League games at Con of the North this weekend:

1) I need to build a more robust DM's kit for that sort of thing. I tend to run more theater of the mind combat in my home games, but I really needed a map and minis of some sort for public play.

2) My improv skills have improved dramatically over the last year, thank all the gods. I started out a little rough in both games, but I was able to get into a groove pretty quickly.

3) When the right combination of players come together, it's magic. In this case, ridiculous chaos magic that involved Waterdeep City Watch slip-sliding along frozen bright pink tortle piss as the three players fled the scene of a drunken crime. Bless Alex and Leah and the random guy who decided to sit down with us and play his pirate tortle druid. Long live Cheese Lizard and the Mom Bandit, may their reign of chaos last forever.

4) On the opposite side of things, apparently in organized play, I'm a magnet for young teenage boys whose ultimate goal in D&D life is to play impulsive kleptomaniac rogues. (I mean, this is probably a common teenage boy thing anyway, but this is the second one I've played with in four official DDAL games.)

5) Related to point #4, my second DDAL game was the first time I've ever had a party fail an adventure, as a DM or a player. It also featured my first two PC permadeaths. The klepto kenku rogue was one of them. Maybe the kid learned his lesson, and will not go and immediately try to steal the helmet off of an unusually shiny suit of armor in the middle of a dungeon, lest it turn out to be animated armor and slam all 8 of his level 1 HP away all at once. But he and his dad seemed to have fun, and hopefully the other two players did too. One of the other two players was an experienced AL DM who knew the kid and his dad and decided to sit down and play with us, and he was very kind to me as we were leaving, talking about other failures and TPKs he's experienced while doing DDAL. So I think I did okay, all things considered.

6) The people who run DDAL at CotN are super nice and generous, and I came home with a craft jar Potion of Healing and a copy of Dungeon of the Mad Mage that they just handed me when I checked in for my first game.

7) Running D&D for strangers is stressful, but rewarding, and I totally plan to do it again.

Happy album release day for, well, the entire flipping world! New music from Carbon Leaf, Chris Thile, and the Duhks to be had! Well, as soon as Amazon coughs up the goods. They did ship the Carbon Leaf album yesterday, though, so maybe I'll have it by the end of the week? Because I'm far too cheap to pay for the nice shipping. The other two shipped Friday, though, so I'm hopeful they'll arrive today or tomorrow. Maybe. If I wish hard enough.

I finished the second book in my historical romance experiment yesterday ... Black Silk, by Judith Ivory. I'm still kinda processing what I thought of it. It's excellently written, and draws a vivid portrait of three very interesting, very flawed individuals, all of whom feel incredibly realistic for the time period. As a romance, however? I'm not sure. The end didn't feel entirely satisfying to me - it didn't feel like the two main characters had built up enough trust and respect to really warrant the happy ending. Like I said, it felt very realistic, but I don't really go to romance novels for realism. So ... I think I'd recommend this book, because it held me captivated for three days. Just don't expect anyone between the pages to be entirely heroic!

So ... after visiting with slicklizard41 last night, I find myself randomly in the mood to play video games. Unfortunately, the only games I have for my PS2 are DDR Extreme and the random copy of Sims 2 that was abandoned in the console when I took it. I never have been able to figure out how to play Sims ... so, can anyone recommend any good games for PS2? Adventure-ish games, preferrably, or puzzle games. I'm not much for racing cars or shooting people or anything like that. Alternately, a Sims tutorial might be nice, too, if I can find the damned game now. ;)

It's going to be in the 60s today! Who would have thought that, in the beginning of September, that'd be a warming trend?